Thermaltake's SpinQ heatsink is undeniably good looking.
It's sculptural and nothing about its helical fin arrangement
is unnecessarily complex. It's also happens to be based on a long
standing tradition of cylindrical cooling fins with inset double-sided squirrel
cage fans. Gigabyte released several variants from 2004-2006 based on this
thermal architecture (see here) while Asus with its Lion
Square and Thermalfly approached things
from slightly different angles.

The SpinQ heatsink (model: CL-P0466) stands
152mm tall and is made from nickel plated aluminum fins soldered over six copper
heatpipes. Each aluminum fin has a shape that resembles the chain sprocket on a
bicycle, but each of the 54 individual fins is offset 6mm before being threaded
over the copper heatpipes. This creates an eleven-sided
helix that resembles a cheese grater on steroids. Nestled in
the middle is an 80mm diameter, 85mm long squirrel cage fan that draws
air in through both center openings and expels it out in all
directions through the 20mm wide circular cooling fins. The fan spins
at 1000-1600RPM and is not PWM compliant. A small variable resistor is
attached that allows manual fan control if quieter operation is desired.

When operating at full speed the Thermaltake SpinQ heatsink
is moderately audible, at its slowest speed it's very quiet. The
Thermaltake SpinQ heatsink is compatible with Intel socket 775 and AMD socket
754/939/940/AM2+ processors, and weighs 667grams. At the time of this review,
the SpinQ is not compatible with Intel socket LGA1366 Core i7
processors.

The 80mm
squirrel cage fan is suspended in the midst of the cylindrical cooling fins. Air
is drawn in from either side of the SpinQ before the blades exhaust it outward
in all directions. The translucent fan blades are illuminated with a couple blue
LEDs for added visual effect.

The six copper heatpipes are soldered to a nickel
plated copper base plate, though not well enough. Voids are clearly
visible between the heatpipes and the copper base plate when the heatsink
is held up in front of a light. Heat is still conducted along the
edges of the heatpipes (think of a cylinder sitting in a V-slot), but this flaw certainly affects the efficiency of the
SpinQ heatsink at moving heat energy from the CPU to the fins. The
two cuts in the top aluminum cap are for the AMD clip to slide
into.

Mounting Method and Hardware

The Thermaltake SpinQ heatsink is
compatible with both Intel and AMD processors so two different mounting brackets
are supplied. Installation is quite simple for socket 775 processors because the
heatsink uses the standard Intel push-to-click retention tabs, in spite of the
heatsinks' 667gram weight.

For AMD processors a simple K8
mounting clip is used which locks onto the existing heatsink retention frame.

This heatsink will be tested on FrostyTech's Intel LGA775 and K8 version
of the Mk.II synthetic thermal temperature test platform, and compared against
a hundred reference LGA775 and K8 heatsinks. The whole test methodology is
outlined in detail here if you'd like to know what equipment is
used, and the parameters under which the tests are conducted.